


have you heard the whispers on the ocean breeze?

by kagehana_tsukio



Category: One Piece
Genre: Canon Compliant, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Poetry, no romance but if there ends up being some it'll be noted in chapter summary or notes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:21:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26265646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kagehana_tsukio/pseuds/kagehana_tsukio
Summary: A collection of ficlets and poetry for various prompts from discord.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	1. they say fear is the warning, and death the consequence, but isn't that backward?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they say fear is the warning, and death the consequence, but isn't that backward?
> 
> (background spoilers: Goa flashback)

Some people thought about the fear that rang through the world, when they first heard about Gold Roger and his crew of pirates. 

About how they’d reached the end of the Grand Line, and laughed to tell the tale. 

The fear that it was _pirates_ who had done this, and the fear of what these pirates would do now. Sure, it wasn’t the current Age of Pirates, but in those days, no one hadn’t heard of the Rock Pirates and the ends they would go to. And now a former member of that generation had reached what not even the World Government could claim. 

_’Some say,’_ the whispers came, _’that the man who would be King of the New World and her waters knows of secrets that should never be told.’_

Some dismissed these claims. After all, the ocean could have no King other than herself. 

Some did not discard these claims, and soon the world knew the King of Pirates

Fear compounded on fear as this title spread through the world. 

A King? Could pirates have a king? 

_’This was the one who circled the world, who’s to say he could not command where we couldn’t imagine?”_

And soon the consequence arrived. 

GOLD ROGER. EXECUTED AT LOGUETOWN. 

It was a warning. 

A warning, as the South Blue suffered in fear and silence and at the actions of the World. 

A warning, as a grandfather brought his grandchild to his home and left him behind. 

A warning, as a child tucked his fear in his heart, and drowned himself in a forest.


	2. (zoro) whispers in the night, whispers at noon

hone your senses  
your edge  
your drive. 

‘strike true,’  
it whispers at noon,  
your truest partner  
since the fall of your last. 

‘strike bloody, ‘  
it whispers in moonlight,   
‘and make my blade glint  
as red as my hilt.’

‘strike swift,’  
it whispers in the night,  
the lost blade   
of a fallen warrior. 

\- and with your will we will cut the heavens


	3. rayleigh + echoes

Sometimes it feels like --  
(we  
you  
i)   
\--only exist in echoes   
  
In the traces you've left behind   
of yourself,  
in places the world will never touch,   
only existing in memories.   
  
And in the journeys  
that are starting anew.


	4. koala + sun(shine)

This feeling of  
weightless  
freedom.

Of no chains  
around her limbs  
shackling her  
to this hopeless earth.

Of the sea to her sides,  
their eyes on her back,  
his hand in his,  
gentled by experience  
and fierce with fear.

Standing next to them,   
_(she'd forgotten the feeling_  
 _of anything_  
 _but that cavernous despair)_  
was like standing with the sun.


	5. shanks + contentment

For someone known as one of the Four Emperors, Shanks was far too content to enjoy the sights of the New World, to experience a good party, a good fight, and indulge in more drinks than any civilian or booze-blooded sailor would know what to do with.

(Of course, this is in comparison to those who still crave that out of their reach.

Wealth,

fame,

power.

He'd already had what he dreamed of.

~~And nothing would make the blood course through his veins in the same way as seeing that red coat lead them into unsailed seas.~~ )

But even then, he remembers meeting Luffy for the first time- that feeling he'd thought had left him, that this- that no matter how long it had stayed with him, and the memories it carried with it- he knew.

This hat was not meant to stay with someone as fond of contentment as he.


	6. (luffy) a crown of gold

A crown of gold lit him up from behind,   
like a sun rising in the morning.

And like clouds across the sky,   
his light fell upon them. 

Touches of blues and reds   
enriched  
with colours unknowable,   
and marking them his. 


	7. (luffy) he who wears the crown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a poem: about the one who wears the crown and whose gravity eclipses planets

Imagine:   
the sun lighting the world,   
as it rises in the sky.  
Turning the earth and seas as gold   
as the crown he wears upon his head. 

And still,   
the sun's hold on its planets,  
and the moons pull of the tides,  
could not begin to compare   
to the gravity   
that draws them to him.


	8. (carrot) but the moon never shows anymore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (spoilers: wano)

As Sulong, blessed with the power of the moon, she could defeat armies. But sometimes, as she joined her brothers and sisters to face down Kaido, even with all the power in the world, it still feels like the moon never shows anymore.


	9. (luffy) and if the phoenixes choke on their ashes, what then?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (spoilers: marineford)

He'd burned so bright, blazing like a phoenix, burning like the supernovas the world claimed he was a part of, and going and going and going and never wanting to stop.

They watched, in awe, in fear, but they never asked-

and if,

the phoenix

chokes,

on their ashes?

(what then)

Just like remembering the explosion, and forgetting the black hole left behind.

But he's not a star, and he's not a phoenix.

~~ And if he did choke on ashes, they were not  his . ~~


	10. brook + intangible

He wanders  
in the night.  
The morning, the day,  
all blends together  
under the touch of fog.  
  
He wanders  
as days and decades sail by,  
like ship by passing ship  
with only the bones of his history  
to keep him company.  
  
Alone, only with the songs on the wind,  
is he as intangible as the mists around him?  
As untouchable  
as the ghosts of his past  
lingering only in memory  
and a single shell  
as fragile as his hope.


	11. coby + inspiration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (spoilers: post-dressrosa)

Always moving forward, his eyes on the horizon. 

(on each paper that came with the News Coo, discretely checking for news of pirates) 

Some people whispered behind his back, about Marineford, about how he'd dared to step in front of Fleet Admiral Sakazuki, about how he was former Vice-Admiral Garp's apprentice, about how he'd come from East Blue, the weakest sea, the coward's sea where cowards are from and cowards are sent _(never mind Vice Admirals Garp and Smoker and the Pirate King and two of the worst generation supernovas they are outliers out of thousands, surely)_ and as much as Helmeppo tried to stop them or stop him from hearing of them he could do nothing but prove them wrong with his actions. 

So he did. 

With each assignment he fought harder, and with each island he smiled kinder. 

Don't give them a reason to doubt you, don't give them a reason to hold you (your Justice) back. 

The whispers slowed (he didn't notice).

He didn't notice how the condemnation had become admiration. How the kids of the islands and ports he visited whispered and stared at him when he left, bandanas tied to their foreheads and stars in their eyes. 

('Why do you want to join?'

'I was inspired.) 


	12. (sabo) tangled knots of memories

When the memories came back-   
it was like fire. 

(like the way ace had burned so brightly  
maybe not gentle,   
but fierce.  
like the way the lord of the mountain  
protected its domain) 

The flames that ended   
the joy of three childhoods,   
The flames that embodied the way   
they lit the night   
Together. 

(oxygen, fuel, ignition) 

It _burned_ ,   
and sometimes it felt like   
all that was left behind were   
tangled knots of memories  
and the ash buried into the dirt of the earth. 

(was he imagining it?   
when he closed his eyes:   
it felt like he could see   
the final embers of ace's life  
falling onto cold stone,   
just ~~forever~~ out of reach.   
as it always would be) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oxygen, fuel, ignition.   
> Sabo - the air, breathing joy, keeping the fuel and flame alive   
> Ace - the fuel. Without it there is no basis for flame   
> Luffy - ignition, the spark of life that lights it all
> 
> They lost Sabo, and the remaining two kept burning until the flame was lost and the fuel died (out). But as long as there's that last spark left, if you feed the flames with oxygen, sometimes you can bring it back.


	13. sabo + legacy

He watches as the people fight against their kings and queens and fight for their lives and rights to live and wonders- 

_'Is this my legacy?'_

What does it mean when a man who does not remember his past or where he comes from other than the knowledge that when they fished him from flaming waters as a child, he had begged to never return? To never be brought back to a hateful kingdom he could not ever remember living in? 

Is his legacy the bloodstained ground of failed revolutions and fallen comrades who fought in battles of countries that could not be theirs? Or is it to be fighting for the future's right to live a life he never got to, free and joyful? 

~~If it was the latter, he believed he could go out dying with a smile. After all, being the spark for a new age was the best kind of exit wasn't it?~~

Sometimes though, he thought beyond that. Watching his friends (his family) protectively as a dragon his hoard, protectively possessively, with the knowledge that others wouldn’t hesitate to snatch any and all of them away if it would benefit them. He wondered if maybe his legacy wasn't the world, but the people he left behind and the marks left missing once they were gone from his life and him from theirs. 

(he found out though in the end. 

he'd already _left_ a legacy in the crumbling pieces of a boat and two boys on a cliff and a smile in the wind and a flag that never left the harbour of an island tucked into the corner of the weakest sea of the vast world under a vast sky. 

he supposed his legacy was always meant to be flames) 


End file.
